Chapter 21

ZACH

Now that Stella was gone, Zach unbuckled his seat belt and stretched out in the backseat, breathing deeply. Without magic on to dampen it, the scent of her honeysuckle ran riot inside the car. He might’ve

been a bee, for how strongly it called to him.

And before she’d left… she’d implied they’d meet again.

He ran the knuckles of one hand underneath his chin, contemplating everything about her as he felt the beginnings of his beard’s shadow.

She wasn’t running toward him—but she was also no longer running away.

It was progress, of a sort. He felt his lips peel into the widest smile he’d made in quite some time—he knew because, by the time he got back to Damian’s home in the Briars, the muscles of his cheeks hurt.

THE SELF-DRIVING car parked in front of the fountain, and Zach stepped out of it, feeling like an entirely new man, as he ran up the front stairs, coat in hand, the doors flung open in welcome.

“Brother!” Austin shouted, getting to him first, clobbering him with a hug that involved almost violent back-pats. “You did it!”

“Did what?” he whispered to himself, as Austin pulled him into the castle’s entry hall, which Grimalkin—Damian’s multi-dimensional magical cat—had redecorated into a picnic party for him. There were wooden tables with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, a barbeque running—somehow safely, indoors—vats of side dishes and coolers full of beer. Grimalkin himself was sitting on one of the tables, like a little preening cat statue, licking his forepaw, looking smug.

Austin took a noticeable sniff near Zach’s ear and squinted, but before he could say anything, Mills ambushed him. “We’ve all been waiting for you to come home!” she squealed, flinging herself into Zach’s arms. “I’m so proud of you for taking a break!”

That was right. He had had a job, as of this morning—one he’d given himself a vacation from. “Gee, thanks, Mom,” Zach said with gentle sarcasm and a chuckle before setting her back down.

“No, really, man. Congrats,” Jamison said, coming up to hug him as well, slapping him on the back with his metal hand.

“It’s just two weeks,” he complained with a laugh, looking at the rest of his friends, Damian, Austin, and Ryana. “Have I been that much of an asshole?”

“You don’t even want to know,” Damian said, grinning while shaking his phone meaningfully. “Max is on vacation with Brian right now, but he sends congratulations, and Andi’s happy for you too, but she was beaten after work and couldn’t stay up.”

“Nor would I expect her to, because this,” he said, looking around the room, realizing the floor was covered in grass, “is kind of silly.”

“It’s not, because we love you,” Mills said, squeezing his arm and pulling him inside.

“And you should feel special when she says that, man,” Jamison told him. “Because you know my girl can’t lie.”

“I don’t know,” Austin said, squinting like he was reading a distant text.

“There was that one night, sometime in March, two thousand thirteen, when I was pretty sure I didn’t love you, but I think we were fighting over a videogame.”

Zach reached over and shoved him. “Shut up.”

“I’m kidding,” Austin said and laughed. “Vacation looks good on you, brother.” He swung his leg over a picnic bench and sat down, pulling a beer out of a magical cooler nearby. “Did you pre-game?” he asked, with a bit of a judgmental leer. “Or are we post-gaming? I need to know how many beers to drink here to stay even. I can’t let you celebrate alone.”

“I haven’t drunk anything yet,” Zach said, hanging his suit jacket on the nearest chair. The fabric hung oddly because he still had the jar of whatever-the-hell Larios Junior had thrown at him in his pocket. He pulled it out and instantly had everyone’s attention. “Anyone know what this is?” he asked, tossing it lightly to Mills, who caught it.

She cracked the seal and looked inside. A foul smell wafted out, and Ryana clapped a protective hand over her nose with a loud “Ugh!” Austin gave her a worried glance then glared at the goop inside the jar.

“You’re not going to like my top three guesses,” he said, his upper lip curled in disgust.

Mills twisted the cap back on, quickly. “This is a job for a fume hood.”

Zach reached into a cooler—Grimalkin had procured him a Heady Topper beer for the occasion—and he sat down. “Let me tell you how I came across it.”

EVERYONE CAREFULLY LISTENED to him recount his morning with Stella as they ate a picnic lunch, indoors.

“So, Larios Senior was… trying to live forever? Purportedly?” Jamison had taken up the jar to stare through the glass at the slimy, opaque fluid inside.

“He was human, right?” Damian asked Zach.

“As far as I knew, yeah. I mean, we weren’t close, but—well, if he was magical, would he have choked to death on an egg?” Zach said with a snort.

“And you’re positive he wasn’t a Hunter?” Ryana asked. She was wearing a flowing green dress, and sitting on a chair that had a low enough back for her draconic wings to flare out.

“Not. He was an asshole, and he might have wanted to kill me once or twice, but I never got the impression that he’d skin and eat me after.” Zach set his empty beer can on the table, then swung his arms behind his head and his feet out. “It was just so strange was all. He’d been working hard in that little room, doing something industrious… I just couldn’t tell while we were in there if it had a purpose or not, or if he was going mad. I’d have been willing to write the whole thing off, but then Junior’s last comment about starry skies.”

Mills teased Grimalkin with the end of her long braid within her lap. “Do you think you could draw some of the other constellations on the paper?” she asked.

Zach inhaled then paused. “Just one. The rest of them looked like squiggles, honestly.” But the one he’d seen mirrored on Stella’s thigh was currently branded in his mind.

“Grimalkin?” Damian asked, and the cat’s ears twitched. “Pen and paper, please.”

The requested objects appeared in front of Zach, and he quickly sketched out the markings he’d repeated on Stella’s tattoo.

“Look familiar?” he asked, flipping the page around, and panning slowly so that everyone else could see.

“No. Not really,” Damian said, pausing between taking bites of a hamburger. Everyone else shook their head, until he reached Ryana, and her eyes widened.

“It’s… Lezore.” She leaned forward and Zach handed the paper over for her to take. She held it up and twisted it in midair, putting it on its side, so that it was in the same orientation it had been on Stella’s leg if she were standing. “Damian, look—remember?” she shook it at her brother, who made a face and frowned.

“No.”

“Didn’t you pay attention in any of your celestial classes?” Ryana tsked before addressing the group. “Just like Earth has constellations, the Realms do too. And I’m pretty sure this is Lezore. More so, if everything else on the map was stars, like you said.”